[Android Head-Units] festor:
Wow, what a great thread… loads of info. Sorry to come late to the party with a long thread, but it looks like I have the same head unit with a different facia/screen for a Ford. I can’t find the listing for the silver unit anymore, but this one in black is identical (just add www):

ebay.co.uk/itm/130886886916?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

Keeping in mind I was changing from a fairly terrible WinCE/Android dual boot unit I find this one (mostly) a pleasure to use. I have a third party dvb-t aerial and reversing camera with wireless transmitter hooked up too:

ebay.co.uk/itm/ES097S-In-Car-Digital-TV-DVB-T-Antenna-Aerial-Booster-/180683451666

ebay.co.uk/itm/181143930750?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

ebay.co.uk/itm/290755100102?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

For anyone getting the dvb-t option the bundled aerial was all but useless in anything but strong signal areas. I then tried the following because of the stunning feedback:

ebay.co.uk/itm/128db-Car-Freeview-Digital-TV-Antenna-Aerial-DVB-T-IEC-/310262842044?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item483d1b42bc

It wasn’t much better so I ended up trying the previous one above and it works well. It is quite directional (windscreen mount) but pointing the car in the right direction gives a good picture pretty much everywhere (West Central Scotland, UK). If I can work out how to stop video until I apply the handbrake I’m going to try one on the back screen for a dual setup. When I apply the video in motion setting it gives the warning permanently regardless of the handbrake. The brake wire in the loom is supposedly only to allow video at all times so I don’t know if this is possible.

Unlike others I get good reports on the mic quality during calls (paired with Galaxy S2). Unlike the previous unit there is no echo or distortion. The one issue I have with the phone option is the lack of speed dial. As many have posted you can’t even order the phone book alphabetically and I would happily pay for an app that allowed creation of speed dials. I tried pretty much all of the dialer/contact apps in the hope one of them doesn’t need access to android contacts, but no luck.

I have a canbus hooked up and mapped the steering wheel buttons successfully. On the Mondeo the left column stalk has the built in oem phone control buttons, but they don’t respond to mapping. At first I thought the illumination didn’t work until I noticed not only do I need to put the lights on, but also adjust the dash brightness before the head unit reacts. I guess it’s just the way this version of canbus decrypts commands as my previous one worked fine.

Similar FM reception as the previous unit and they are both a bit worse than the original stereo. BBC and other strong signal stations are good, but regional and medium strength stations give interference such as pops and clicks. Particularly annoying on the likes of Classic FM. AM reception is great.

The resistive screen is quite resistive :) It also looks washed out and is useless in bright light. The old screen (also resistive) was quite a bit brighter (too bright actually) and more sensitive. I tried various anti-glare protectors without success. It actually looks like it already has a thick, milky, anti-glare cover that is dulling down the brightness and yes, I did remove the packing protector :) Is the capacitive screen better to look at and not just to use?

The music app (piano logo) lists and plays sd card music backwards. As 949BFN mentioned the .m3u files are deleted (android issue) but am I doing something wrong with playing the actual mp3 files? I would be happy if I could just get the bundled music app to play the files in order. I tried what 949BFN detailed (thanks) but I can’t stop deletion of m3u playlists.

Mine takes 35 sec to boot. I use Sygic quite a lot and don’t mind the extra boot time, but maybe there is a way to stop it auto starting each time? Sygic takes a further10 sec to boot and then another 5 to get a gps signal. It was preinstalled with Russian maps. I grabbed the latest UK maps with the preinstalled map downloader and it all works perfectly.

A huge bonus with this unit is the sound quality. Compared to the original and previous WinCE unit it is considerably better. A much cleaner and more vibrant sound. Quite a bit louder too. It has even prompted me into buying new speakers.

As I mentioned before, I hated the previous WinCE/Android unit. I actually got into a bit of a dispute with pumpkin over the inability to run any sat nav software other than the bundled IGO. This was not what their listing/advert said. It also took over 4 min to boot the android side and this is no exaggeration. They finally admitted it was a hardware issue (underpowered) then took payment for an upgrade module (new cpu/ram/android 4.0) but then “their factory” couldn’t supply the promised unit. They also refused to discount the pure android unit. They do not sell the same unit anymore, but I think they have just retrofitted the upgrade module I was going to buy and sell them under this listing:

ebay.co.uk/itm/Android-4-0-Car-DVD-GPS-Player-Stereo-DVBT-TV-Ford-Focus-Mondeo-S-max-Silver-/190814782659?pt=US_Video_In_Dash_Units_w_GPS&hash=item2c6d7284c3

The WinCE side looks identical. You can also see they say Android 2.3 in the spec, but the images say 4.0. Anyway, avoid this unit. Even with phone book synced it only displayed incoming numbers, not names. You had really bright, bright and off settings for the screen plus too many other glitches to mention.

I got my pure android hu from alexcardvd as they were cheaper and I didn’t want to use pumpkin, but it turns out they are pumkin just under another name… like a lot of “pure android” sellers such as star_cardvd etc.